


Homecoming

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: Harsh Realm
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:13:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherever home ends up being.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

Out of all the things he'd been expecting that evening, the last—-the very _last_—-was the stale sound of the doorbell.

It wasn't broken, but it sure as hell wasn't working well. Which pretty much wrapped up the last day, since he'd gotten back. So many things old, tattered, covered with dust and simply not functioning. It was a wonder he still had power and water. He didn't even know why he'd made that part of the deal; it wasn't like he'd been planning on coming back.

He hadn't been planning on a lot of things.

When it had happened it had happened so fast, so simply. Small team of men, finally some that were decently trained and with just the right amount of blood-hate to give fire to their actions. Men, time, opportunity.

The day before their insertion he'd been quiet. He'd known what it was going to mean. Hobbes had come to him.

"You know we can do this."

He'd gazed up at the kid in silent despair. A kid was what he was, too. A child. Barely old enough to shave, it felt like, and here he was thinking he could just charge in and save the world. And fuck the collateral damage.

He stared up at him, feeling like a condemned man before his executioner. And couldn't say any of this, didn't even know how to start. _I don't want this. I can't go back. For the love of God, I can't go back to that._

But what the fuck else was there? Keep running? Go back to Santiago? He was so tired. And the kid wanted to go home, fuck, maybe deserved to go home, maybe shouldn't have ever been there in the first place.

So he'd smiled hollowly up at him. "Yeah, we can." And the kid had gripped his shoulder and grinned a hard grin and he'd wanted nothing more than for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

But he'd gone, when it was time. He'd picked up his gun and had held onto it tight because he'd known it was the last time for that. He'd run by his side, jumped out of the truck and run past the barriers and up the stairs, and watched the guards fall in gushes of red and flashes of blue-white. He'd burst through the doors and there he had been, and he hadn't even thought past that point. He hadn't had to. Hobbes had done it all. It had always been his kill.

When it was over he'd felt her soft touch on his shoulder and he'd turned to her.

"I can't go back."

And she'd shaken her head slowly. _You have to._

He'd stared down at the floor, unable to meet her gaze, so clear and so steady. "I—-"

A hand gently in the center of his chest, pushing back as she stepped away, shaking her head again. _You don't belong here._

"But..." _This is the only place I've ever really belonged._

But then, in the portal room, staring down at the chair and the glistening metal of the walls, he'd moved as if in a dream, as if he were a puppet with some malevolent god pulling at his strings. Moved to the chair, slid onto it with the creak of the leather loud in his ears. Felt the headphones slide over his head, binary whistle and hum and the terror of his limbs dissolving into nothingness, being sucked down a long dark tunnel.

He hadn't seen Hobbes after that. Seeing in general had become something flat and strange. He moved through the world and felt like he was looking at a video of someone else's life. He had forgotten how it felt, or had nearly convinced himself that he had.

That wasn't nearly as bad as the other. As moving on the cold table and feeling only one leg shift, only one foot stretch and flex. As feeling the tightness of the scar tissue along the right side of his face, down his neck and along his shoulder and ribs. He'd felt that, rolled away on his side when they came rushing over to him, clenched his fists against his mouth and swallowed away his screaming.

Hobbes wasn't there. The warehouse was vast. They didn't know, several others had woken up and things were disordered. They hadn't been expecting it. They took him away for debriefing. He answered their questions mechanically. They gave him clothes, a large check, the keys to his house, a long document to sign, and a ride. Outside it was almost dawn, the sky glowing faintly with the first hints of the sun. Birds were singing. The trees were budding green; it was early spring. He'd leaned his head against the car window and stared dully out at the blooming, living world. Flat. Distant. One hand drifted absently up, tracing the lines of twisted skin that covered half of his face.

His house. He'd been so excited when his grandfather had left it to him. No more shitty apartments. No more shitty landlords. Someplace to make his own, away from the city, out where it was truly dark at night and you could walk outside and see stars.

That had been before he'd had his fill of darkness and stars.

It was still standing and still in reasonably good shape, per the agreement. Bills paid. No broken windows. The worst problems were ones of general disuse and the decay that attacks all houses. Nothing he couldn't put right on his own in a few days. If he wanted to.

Why had he done it? Told them to look after it for him? He hadn't meant to return. He'd gone to Harsh Realm to die, however the mission turned out. This... this, the last thing on the planet he still felt to be his. The house where the parents of his father had lived and died. History. He'd never liked history.

They dropped him off at the door and he'd walked slowly up the drive, the metal and plastic thing moving underneath him clumsily. They'd given him a cane to help him get used to the prosthetic again and he leaned on it like an old man. He felt like an old man.

He was an old man.

There was a willow tree by the road. Its trailing boughs swayed in the morning breeze. It should have been lovely.

He turned the key in the lock; it stuck and he forced it and it turned and he almost fell inside. In the front hall it was dim and smelled of dust.

He stumbled into the small living room, over to one of the windows and pushed it open. Dingy curtains blew inward, dust puffing out of them. He made his tottering way over to the couch and fell onto it, sending up another cloud of dust. He breathed it in and coughed and laughed and curled on his side, his face twisting and hurting as the tears streamed down his cheek, out of his good eye.

The other one only stung and stayed dry.

He thought maybe he slept for a while. He woke up to an aching in his back and leg, and dusk falling outside and the threatening rumble of thunder in the distance. The curtains were waving hectically in the window. Already the floor was spattered with rain.

He got groaningly up and shut the window. Made his way into the kitchen. Canned things. Empty fridge. He wasn't hungry anyway.

He'd walked slowly through the rest of the house, carefully, as though afraid of waking something from its sleep. It was almost full dark now, but he didn't turn on a light. The flatness was easier to take like this, with all the color leached out of the world.

He went back to the living room and sank down onto the couch again, his hands falling limp into his lap. He looked blankly at the darkness and the lightning flashing outside and wondered what in the hell he was going to do.

A few hours later the doorbell rang.  


* * *

  
He stared silently out at the drenched figure standing on the porch. It was some torturous kind of dream. It had to be. There was no way in hell this was real. It was dark, anyway; there were still no lights on in the house. He must be mistaking the face.

Then lightning flashed overhead and he was sure, and his stomach sank down past the floorboards.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

It seemed the obvious question.

"I rented a car," Hobbes said. Pinocchio shook his head. It didn't explain much.

"But what are you _doing_ here?"

"They gave me your address when I asked." Hobbes was shuffling his feet, his arms wrapped around his middle. Shivering. Pinocchio wondered if maybe he should invite him in. "I didn't know where else to go."

He let himself fall against the doorframe, feeling a new wave of tiredness wash over him. There was something almost calming about it. It was hard to feel much of anything. "What happened?"

"I went—-she was..." Hobbes stopped, fumbled, made a strange choking sound. "She wasn't there. At the house. She wasn't anywhere. They didn't tell me. I don't know where she is." He turned away a little and seemed to laugh. "She's gone."

Pinocchio looked at Hobbes for a long moment. Hobbes looked away and out at the swirling night. The shining on his face might have been rain.

Pinocchio stepped wearily to one side and held the door open. "Come in."  


* * *

  
"Why is it so dark in here?"

They stood in the front hall. It was indeed dark; Pinocchio could barely see Hobbes a foot away. Hobbes was peering around with a curiousness that he didn't quite like.

"The lights are off."

He could see Hobbes reaching out in the dimness, feeling the wall. "Don't—-"

There was a small click and harsh overhead light hit his eye like a hammer. He winced and turned his face quickly away. Out of the corner of his vision Hobbes's face hovered, eyes wide with shock.

"Turn it off."

"Jesus Christ, Mike."

"Would you fucking turn it off, please?" It came out sharper than he meant and Hobbes recoiled slightly.

"Okay, okay. I'm sorry." Another click and merciful darkness fell again. He could feel Hobbes's eyes still on him through the black. An uncomfortable silence unspooled between them.

"The kitchen's empty. I think I might have some tea that's still good."

"Okay."

He went to the kitchen, leaving Hobbes behind in the dark hallway. In the kitchen he had to turn a light on and did so, wincing again as it pounded into him. Something deep in the front of his skull was aching.

He found the tea and examined it as the water began to heat on the stove. Green. He had no idea how to tell if tea was still good. He didn't even know if tea could go bad. He dropped it onto the counter and leaned forward and told himself to breathe, just breathe.

He could hear Hobbes moving around in the next room. Heard a muffled thud and a curse.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. This wasn't supposed to happen. It should have been simple, for him. Get out, go home, get the girl and live happily ever after. What had she done? She had been pregnant. Found someone else? Someone who had the advantage of being present? Or had she just not wanted to stay? Had it been too painful after a while?

Women. He shook his head and laughed weakly.

The kettle began to whistle. He cut the flame, found two chipped mugs in a cabinet, filled them and added the tea and let it sit for a few seconds. Didn't smell bad. Smelled pretty damn good, actually.

He turned off the light and went back to the living room, walking unsteadily without the cane. Hobbes was sitting on the couch, staring at the blank TV screen. He looked up as Pinocchio entered and took the mug without a word.

"There's no milk."

"It's okay."

"There's not really any food either."

Hobbes shook his head. Took a sip of the tea. "It's not bad."

"After three years."

They sat in the dark and the silence for a few minutes. Outside the thunder was beginning to fade. Lightning flickered occasionally. The storm was moving away.

Hobbes took a breath, then another, as though he was preparing to say something he hadn't quite worked out yet. Pinocchio didn't give him a chance.

"It wasn't your business."

"You still could have told me," Hobbes said quietly. "That is why, isn't it? Why you didn't want to come back."

Pinocchio took a large swallow of tea, relishing the rush of heat against the back of his throat. "Among other things."

"Did you think I—-"

"I don't know what I thought. It doesn't matter."

"How did it happen?"

So many questions. In another time and another place they would have annoyed him. Now he couldn't quite work up the energy to be annoyed. It was like watching someone else ask them, hearing someone else answer. "Doesn't matter either."

Thunder crashed suddenly, a stray cloud exploding overhead. Hobbes jumped a little and cast a quick glance over at the man sitting on the opposite end of the couch, his face cloaked in shadow.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know." Hobbes looked away, down, as though he was avoiding the gaze of someone Pinocchio couldn't see. "Try to find her. Try to find out what happened." Somewhere outside a bird cawed abrasively. "I can go—-I can find a hotel. I have money. They gave me some money."

Pinocchio watched him for a long moment. Watched his face, white and indistinct in the dimness. Watched his hands curled around his mug, the fingers nothing more than thin lines, shaking ever so slightly. Watched him and thought about other times watching him, far away from here but just as dark. Just as alone. Only then there had been the thought of going back lighting up his eyes. There had been the thought of her.

He got up gingerly. The prosthetic didn't fit right. Or it did, but it felt wrong. It felt alien. It felt like a hunk of plastic and metal which had nothing whatsoever to do with him. Sleep. He wanted to take it off and sleep again for a while.

"You can stay."

"Stay?" Hobbes looked up at him blankly.

"Yeah. You know. Here." Pinocchio gestured to the couch. Hobbes glanced down at it and back up at him.

"Oh. Thanks."

Pinocchio turned without a word and shuffled down the hall to the bedroom. It felt further away than he remembered, the dark hallway stretching in front of him like a tunnel, no end in sight. But he did get to the end and when he turned to look behind him it was only a few feet after all.

The bedroom was small, like the rest of the house. It was cluttered with clothes he'd never put away and books he'd never got around to reading. Like the rest of the house it smelled of dust and absence. He opened the window by the bed and sank down onto it, breathing in the cool wet in the night air, the rich smell of rain and damp soil. The bird outside cawed again.

He reached down, the old springs squealing protestingly as his weight shifted. Not much weight now. Even in the Realm he'd been reasonably well-fed and strong. Here he was skinny, the muscles on his arms and leg atrophied and weak. At least Hobbes didn't look much better.

He started to remove the prosthetic—and then stopped. He could hear something, coming from the living room. Muffled but still there, still audible. He got to his feet again and left the room, making his way down the hall as quietly as he could. At the entrance to the living room he stopped, watching the man seated on the couch and facing away from him, hunched over and shaking as the sobs shivered through him and he tried desperately to fight them back.

Without thinking he stepped forward to the back of the couch, reached down and laid a hand on Hobbes's shoulder. Hobbes started, turned half around and then away again, curling tighter into himself.

"I'm sorry."

"Stop it." Stop what? Stop crying? Stop feeling? _Stop fucking apologizing for things you can't control._

"You shouldn't even be here."

"Neither should you."

Hobbes laughed harshly. "Then we're even."

"Come to bed with me."

The words were out before he knew it, before he knew he was even going to say them. They hung huge and awkward in the air and he wanted to grab them, pull them back. What was he thinking? It wasn't— And Hobbes was... and why would he? Why would he ever?

"Bed?"

"If you want to." Pinocchio looked down at the floor, the right side of his face turned very carefully away. "That couch is old." _The bed is old, too. But it's big and you... you can't be alone here._

Hobbes nodded, wiping a palm half-heartedly at his eyes. "Okay."

So they climbed into bed together and lay side by side, a vast expanse between them. Pinocchio lay on his back and stared up at the vague lines of a water stain on the ceiling. He felt the breeze blowing across his skin from the open window, felt it even through the thick numbness of the scars. He felt the distant crying of long-lost nerves and tried not to think about it. He felt the warmth from the body lying next to him and resisted the urge to turn towards it, move into it, lose himself in it and drift.

A hand settled over his where it lay at his side, bridging the gap. He inhaled sharply and squeezed his eye closed, turning his face away to the window. But his hand stayed. Felt.

"Thank you."

He didn't reply to that; just lay there in a room that smelled like lost time, watching the pre-dawn glow begin to shine, feeling the small center of warmth in his hand send out little tendrils that spread and twisted their way into his bones and skin, falling asleep to dreams of a world which was better and more frightening, and in which things actually made sense.  


* * *

  
He woke up later into pale cloud-light. The clearing at the end of the storm hadn't lasted.

He wished, lying curled on his side, that this could be one of those moments in movies and stories, where you wake up and for a few seconds you aren't sure where you are, or you mistake the world you're in for some other that you left a long time ago.

This was not one of those moments. He knew exactly where he was. He knew it the second his eye opened.

The bed was empty of anyone else; he couldn't see it but he could feel it, the lack of warmth and weight, no sound of soft breathing. If he was lucky the kid was gone, gone off to find his girl and live happily ever after. If he was lucky.

Somehow he doubted that kind of luck.

He sat up. His head felt dense and heavy. He reached over the side of the bed and grabbed his cane and half-walked, half-hopped to the bathroom. Pissed. Brushed his teeth. Turned on the shower and lowered himself into the tub and sat there under the spray pounding itself into his skin. It felt thin to him, like it might pierce and hit his muscles, bore tiny holes in his bones like limestone cliffs. He sat there for a long time. There was a period where things greyed out for a bit. Maybe he dozed.

Finally the water began to chill and he had to move. He pulled himself out, toweled himself off and hopped back into his bedroom, dressing mechanically in clothes he barely glanced at. Looked down at the prosthetic lying askew on the floor like a limb torn from a doll.

He wanted to break it, he realized. He wanted to tear it apart and burn it and drive over it and throw it away, far away from him. He reached down and picked it up with shaking hands. Fitted it against the stump of his knee. Stood up, letting his weight settle on it. Took a step. Another.

Hobbes was sitting at the kitchen table, looking down at something in his hands. He lifted his head and turned and Pinocchio saw what it was: a photograph, faded with age, three men in fatigues standing in the desert, squinting into the sun.

"You look really young."

Pinocchio pulled out a chair and sank into it without a word, reached out and took the photo, staring at it. He did indeed look young. Young and unscarred. He'd still been young enough to believe he was invincible. Bullets and bombs were things that happened to other people. They might miss him by inches but they would never touch him.

By the time he had got to Yugoslavia he had learned how much that wasn't true. There had been no need to drive the point home.

He crumpled the photo in one fist and threw it across the room. It bounced into a dusty corner. Hobbes was looking at him. There was something about the way that Hobbes was looking at him that made him uncomfortable. After he'd left the hospital most people had looked at him, looked away quickly, and then tried to appear as though they really were making eye contact while keeping their heads turned just enough so that they wouldn't have to look directly.

Hobbes was looking directly. Unshocked. Unafraid. Not even pity in his steady blue-green gaze. It didn't make sense.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Did I do something?"

Pinocchio shook his head, leaned forward and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. The pounding in his head was growing.

"Doesn't seem like there's a lot of food," Hobbes said. "I could maybe see if I could make something."

Pinocchio shook his head again and turned, looking around the kitchen for something. He pushed back his chair, got up and went to a cabinet, rummaged in it, came back to the table and set down a large, full bottle of vodka. Hobbes looked at it and then up at him, raising an eyebrow. He grinned and it hurt as the scars pulled and stretched.

"I have a better idea."  


* * *

  
"And then I introduced her to him, and... one thing led to another..."

"So she was with Mel first?"

Hobbes accepted the bottle and took a swig. "That surprises you?"

"Well... yeah, honestly." Pinocchio reached for the bottle, tilted it back. It was almost half empty. He hadn't eaten in almost a day. The room was spinning pleasantly. "Waters is—-was—-an ass."

Hobbes laughed, stretching his legs out on the bed, tangling them in the blankets. "He wasn't always an ass." He frowned suddenly. "Why 'was'?"

"Huh?"

"You corrected yourself. You said 'was'. Why the past tense? We didn't kill him. We never even found him."

"Just because he didn't die then, doesn't mean he's fine now."

His frown deepened. "What are you talking about?"

"They didn't all wake up at once. You think half the guys in there'll get out alive? You didn't fix anything, Hobbes."

"You got out," Hobbes said, voice quiet.

Pinocchio sat up straighter, stared at him. Flat picture, colorless in the grey afternoon light. "You _asshole_," he said softly.

"You got in the chair. No one made you do that, Mike."

"You do not fucking get it, Hobbes. You don't fucking come close."

"So explain it to me!" Somehow they were both upright now and meeting in the middle of the bed, inches apart, angry and blazing and Pinocchio still not quite looking at him, head turned just-so. "You didn't want to be here, you fought me every time I tried to go back with you, so tell me why you followed me home when I didn't even ask you to. _Tell me why._"

Pinocchio looked away, down at his hands. "Fuck you." he breathed. "Fuck you if you don't see it."

"Mike."

Hand reaching out, closing lightly on his jaw and turning it. Fingers tracing up and over the twisted skin of his neck and jaw and cheek. He reached up and closed his hand on Hobbes's wrist, but didn't yank it away. Wanted to pull back and out of reach and couldn't. He let out a long, shuddering breath.

"Don't, I don't want you to—-"

"I'm sorry it happened to you." Leaning forward, warmth. Lips now. Oh, God. He wanted to scream. "I'm so sorry."

"No."

His hands were coming up on their own power, pulling him closer, tightening around his shoulders. No. No, no, he didn't want this, God, no, it was sick...

The room tilted crazily and he felt his back hit the mattress. Heat all along his body now and lips brushing his, more than brushing, perfection kissing him and he kissed it back with the ruins of a mouth. Outside the window the bird screeched again, like a cat, like a human child. Thunder growled far away. None of it mattered. None of it was real.  


* * *

  
When he woke again it was almost dark.

Again he wasn't spared remembering, wasn't spared feeling the quiet warmth lying pressed against him, ribcage rising and falling. He turned and watched it for a while, marveling as the chest expanded and contracted, lifted and sank. Hobbes's eyes were moving rapidly beneath his lids. He was far gone.

Slowly he sat up, slowly he attached the prosthetic, slowly and as silently as he could he moved across the room to the small desk in the corner and the blank stare of the computer monitor. Booted it up. Felt a slight thrill of relief at the existence of a working internet connection. He typed in a few characters and then a few more, periodically looking over his shoulder at the bed, at the body lying prone and motionless beneath the covers. There was a slight stirring when the printer whirred to life. Nothing more.

He shut the computer down and grabbed a piece of paper from a drawer, writing fast and without pause to think. Getting up from the desk, he folded both pieces of paper around another, smaller and more rectangular piece, laid them all on the bed a few inches from Hobbes's outstretched hand, then turned and picked up his cane and walked to the door.

He stopped then, looking back at the bed and the figure on it. For a full minute he gazed at it. Then he shook his head slightly, turned, and headed down the hall to the front door.

Outside the wind was picking up and there was a chill in the air. He lifted his head, breathed it in deep. It was good. It was right.

There was a little wood about a half-mile from the house and he made for it, walking across empty fields and through small copses of trees, branches tipped with new green. The clouds were breaking in places, letting through glimpses of a soft rose-pink sky. The breeze played with his hair and cooled his burning skin. He was almost smiling now.

He reached the wood and entered it along a little deer-track, letting the darkness under the trees swallow him. A few yards in his shirt dropped by the path, snagging on a scrubby bush. A few more yards and his jeans went. His underwear.

He stopped in a clearing, in the center of which stood an old tree, gnarled and blackened and dead by some long-past lightning strike. At the entrance to the clearing he left his cane. He bent down, removed the prosthetic and laid it almost tenderly in a hollow in the ground. Naked, he knelt down and crawled to the dead tree. He turned and seated himself against it, the leaf litter surprisingly comfortable around him. He leaned back and looked up at the sky. There were more breaks in the clouds now, stars shining though. It was going to be a clear night.

Wind rippled through the trees and across his skin, raising goosebumps. He didn't care. He barely felt it. He watched the sky deepen and darken with his one good eye, and after a while it didn't seem so flat any longer. The cold too was fading. Everything was. Everything was right. This was where he was supposed to be. This was where he belonged.  


* * *

  
Hobbes woke up in the dawn, because something was different.

His eyes opened and the folded paper on the bed came into focus. He groaned and stirred and then let his eyes slip closed and dozed for a while longer. He had a headache. Vodka. It was the vodka.

Mike.

His eyes snapped open again, and again the paper filled his vision. He reached out, took it and unfolded it, sat up with a hollow moan and forced his eyes to process the haphazard scrawl.

 

_I'm sorry. This was all a mistake. But I'm going to fix it, so don't worry._

I've booked you on a one-way flight to Los Angeles. It leaves tomorrow. I remember you said once that you were going to move to California before they took you. It seems like as good a place to start looking for her as any.

The check they gave me is also for you. It should help you get started. Good luck.

Again, I'm sorry. You need to find her. Find her.

-P

 

He stared at it, uncomprehending. Flight? Check? Pinocchio needed the check. He needed the money. He didn't even have food in the house. How was he going to...

Where...?

He called, searched the house. It was empty. It felt empty. It felt like no one had lived there for years. His head was splitting open.

The front door was ajar. He stepped out onto the porch, the cold wood aching against his bare feet. There had been a frost in the night. The grass was dusted with fine white powder. He stepped down onto it and walked a few steps, leaving tracks of melted green behind him. He turned in circles. No tracks. Fields in all directions. He could have gone anywhere.

_"Pinocchio!"_

His eyes scanned the horizon and caught a small dark spot close to its edge. Trees. Thick trees. A forest.

And suddenly, somehow, he knew. He could feel it, a tugging. He started towards it, stopped, breathing hectically.

He would follow him, go among the trees, and have to face what was there. And he would see it forever. It would never leave his mind.

He took another step forward. A step back. His feet were numb. A high keening sound escaped his lips.

He turned with a lurch and walked towards his car. Broke into a run. Reached it and pulled the door open. The keys were still in the ignition and he turned them, letting the hum of the engine drown out his head. He hadn't gone back for his shoes. He didn't care.

He pulled out of the driveway and onto the road, driving east into the rising sun. Maybe it was the glare that blinded him. Maybe it was his tears. The folded paper, the printout, the check were all burning in his pocket, heavy like sheets of lead. He reached in and pulled out the letter. He thought he was going to hesitate. He thought it would be hard. It wasn't. He balled it up in his fist, rolled down the window and tossed it out, let the wind take it.

Young man, standing in the desert with the sun on his face. Twisted now, crumpled and thrown away. He drove on. He would stop and get shoes. Later he would buy a bag and some clothes, and drive to the airport. He would run away from this at hundreds of miles per hour, thousands of feet in the air. Maybe then it would let him be. Maybe it would let him be when he saw her face again, when he held her and reclaimed the life they'd taken.

Maybe then the flatness would go out of the world, and the color would come back in. Maybe.

The sun rose before him, distant twin to the sun in his heart. This was what Mike had understood. This was what he'd been unable to live with.

He could barely see the road.


End file.
